TIMES Change! From ‘Divider in Chief’ to ‘Modi united India’, says US’ TIME magazine

A cover image of a popular US’ TIME magazine was the talk of the town as it had put an article on Prime Minister Narendra Modi ‘Divider in chief’, in the middle of Lok Sabha election in India. The magazine’s article had irked a huge controversy over its coverage, however, barely a month after calling Narendra Modi ‘Divider in chief’, the US’ magazine has taken a U-turn.

As TIMES change, so does the US magazine TIME as in its latest article on Narendra Modi, who returned to power with a majority in 2019 Lok Sabha elections, has said that ‘Modi has united India like no Prime Minister in decades’.

In an article published on May 28, a popular TIME magazine praised the Modi-led Bharatiya Janta Party’s developmental agenda in the previous five-tenure from 2014-2019. Notably, in its previous article on PM Modi, it had hugely criticised him.

While the earlier article ‘Divider In Chief’ started with “Of the great democracies to fall to populism, India was the first”, the latest piece said, “A key factor is that Modi has managed to transcend India’s greatest fault line: the class divide”.

“How has this supposedly divisive figure not only managed to keep power but increase his levels of support? A key factor is that Modi has managed to transcend India’s greatest fault line: the class divide,” the TIME article read.

“Populism has given voice to a sense of grievance among majorities that is too widespread to be ignored, while at the same time bringing into being a world that is neither more just nor more appealing,” the article on May 10 said.

However, in its latest piece, the view of the magazine totally changed barely within a month. “Narendra Modi was born into one of India’s most disadvantaged social groups. In reaching the very top, he personifies the aspirational working classes and can self-identify with his country’s poorest citizens in a way that the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty who have led India for most of the 72 years since independence simply cannot," it said.